English

Random walks in the hyperbolic plane and the question mark function

Probability 2017-08-09 v1

Abstract

Consider G=SL2(Z)/{±I}G=SL_2(\mathbb{Z})/\{\pm I\} acting on the complex upper half plane HH by hM(z)=az+bcz+d,h_M(z)=\frac{az+b}{cz+d}, for MGM \in G. Let D={zH:z1,(z)1/2}D=\{z \in H: |z|\geq 1, |\Re(z)|\leq 1/2\}. We consider the set EG\mathcal{E} \subset G with the 99 elements MM, different from the identity, such that (MMT)3(MM^T)\leq 3. We equip the tiling of HH defined by D={hM(D),MG}\mathbb{D}=\{h_M(D), M \in G\} with a graph structure where the neighbours are defined by hM(D)hM(D)h_M(D) \cap h_{M'}(D) \neq \emptyset, equivalently M1MEM^{-1}M' \in \mathcal{E}. The present paper studies several Markov chains related to the above structure. We show that the simple random walk on the above graph converges a.s. to a point XX of the real line with the same distribution of S2WS1S_2 W^{S_1}, where S1,S2,WS_1,S_2,W are independent with Pr(Si=±1)=1/2\Pr (S_i=\pm 1)=1/2 and where WW is valued in (0,1)(0,1) with distribution Pr(W<w)=?(w)\Pr(W<w)=?(w). Here ?? is the Minkowski function. If K1,K2,K_1, K_2, \ldots are i.i.d with distribution Pr(Ki=n)=1/2n\Pr (K_i=n)= 1/2^n for n=1,2,n=1,2,\ldots, then W=1K1+1K2+W= \frac{1}{K_1+\frac {1}{K_2+\ldots}}: this known result (Isola (2014)) is derived again here.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1708.02506,
  title  = {Random walks in the hyperbolic plane and the question mark function},
  author = {Gerard Letac and Mauro Piccioni},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.02506},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:09:38.939Z